


Star Child

by RedBadgerBerry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn, Spaceships, time dilation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29685315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedBadgerBerry/pseuds/RedBadgerBerry
Summary: Tom didn't look back when he left Earth, nothing to tie him to that little rock his species called home. For every month he spends traveling at the speed of light a year passes on Earth, it never bothered him, he didn't have anything waiting for his return. Then he met Harry.***Or, Tom and Harry meet once a year, every year. As Tom watches Harry grow twelve years to his one, he learns what it's like to have someone waiting for you.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Star Child

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Long time reader but first time writer for AO3. This is mostly just to test if anyone likes the idea, I have the next chapter mostly done and a plan for the rest so let me know if you like it. This is Tom/Harry, though that doesn't happen for a long time, but be aware it does happen. Anyway, enjoy!

The problem with space travel is that it’s also uncontrolled time travel, it pulls you forward, forward, forward but never back. Of course quick hops around the solar system at a twentieth of the speed of light were no problem, minutes ticked on and off your timesheet and you were none the wiser, and as humanity overflowed the boundaries of Earth, as was inevitable, whole towns were scooped off the planet and deposited neatly on Mars, Jupiter, Neptune. No, the problem lay when humans wanted to go further and faster. Time dilation, it turned out, was a bitch. People would disappear into the endless darkness and come back as fresh faced as they’d left only to find the faces they’d left behind folded and creased by the gentle hands of time. And although settlements, well, settled far away from the original Earth and orbited new suns, that is where they usually stayed. Interplanetary space travel became a business of families or the familyless, you loved your crew or you loved no one. 

Tom never knew his parents. He had their names, printed above his on his birth certificate, a receipt for a child no one wanted. He’d sneak out of his room in the middle of the night and sit on the sill of the huge window that watched over the orphanage hallway. The other children dreamed of their parents coming back, Tom didn’t, he knew they weren’t, instead he dreamed of stars, of flying through that dark expanse and getting away, away from the bullies, away from the matrons, away from the knowledge that his parents had never wanted him and never would.

Harry’s parents always said that he had an affinity for the stars. His mother called him her ‘star baby’ and told him of how, at only a few weeks old, he’d looked up at the night sky, gazed on the tiny specs of starfire with eyes that were barely old enough to focus and let out a bright trill, “as if calling to them in greeting,” she was fond of saying. Harry had been told the story so many times that when he was three he took his little sister, Amber, and snuck into the garden with her in the middle of the night to see it for himself. Unfortunately, she’d had no such reaction and instead had wailed so loudly she’d woken all the neighbours and gotten Harry into such trouble with their parents that he forgot his reason for dragging her out there in the first place. 

When Tom was ten his arm was broken by some of the bigger boys. They bullied him often, pushed him and called him names, he didn’t cry, he never cried, but then one of him had grabbed his wrist and in trying to get away it had twisted, and-CRACK. The world dissolved into burning, freezing, pain pain pain. And Tom had screamed, had wanted to vomit it ached so bad, had wished for the first time ever that he had his mother, that he had anyone to hold him through this agony.

When Harry was six he broke his arm falling backwards off of his toy slide, he didn’t cry, just lay there staring up at the grey blue sky and kept very still. It wasn’t until his dad came to check on him that anyone noticed it was broken, his parents had taken him to hospital, his cast was lime green and on the way home he was given a chocolate cookie and called their brave little boy. His friends had drawn little doodles all over the plaster shell, and although they’d mostly been blobby stick figures and shaky smiley faces, Dean, the best drawer in the class, had given him a pretty good amalgamation of a cat along the back of his wrist.

At fifteen Tom was a prodigy, he’d already skipped two years at school and he could still talk circles around most of the people in his classes, he devoured anything to do with space travel: astronomy, astronautics, physics, mechanics, piloting. The teachers all gave him pitying looks, “he seems the type,” they’d mutter, “no family, no friends. It’s such a shame.” Tom didn’t think it was a shame, nothing tied him here, he was free to do what he pleased, and it pleased him to get as far away from this little green rock, from this whole solar system, clogged as it was with humanity, as he possibly could. That didn’t stop his classmates talking behind his back.

At eight Harry had decided what he was going to do with his life, he was going to be a pilot, a space one, he wouldn’t go too far, he couldn’t leave his family or all of his friends, no, he’d only do short flights, he’d go to Mars, or Saturn, maybe he’d even go to Pluto. He wouldn’t be able to stay, there wasn’t any terraforming on Pluto, but wouldn’t it be so cool just to see it? Yes, all of his friends agreed, it would be very cool.

By seventeen Tom’d finished his masters in astronautics and received his piloting licence. They called him a ‘star child’, whispered it after him as he swept down the halls. The name for people who were born with no one who loved them so they ran away to the depths of space, spent their lives ferrying things between the pockets of humanity strewn along their corner of the milky way. 

At ten Harry started spending his spare time at Paddy’s, the American style diner owned by his uncles, he’d go there after school and sit in one of the deep leather booths, feet waving an inch above the floor, stylus scribbling across his tablet as he did his homework. It wasn’t long before he started recognising regulars and remembering their orders, he’d flit between the tables wielding a bright smile and a coffee jug the size of his head and get paid in tips and free food, because, as one or both of his uncles would remind him, “we can’t give you a job, Harry, you’re too young.” He’d pout at them till they sent him home.

When Tom turned eighteen he applied to the school of interplanetary travel, at twenty-one he graduated, youngest ever and top of his class, bought his own ship, and disappeared off the face of the Earth, just as he had intended.

Harry was twelve when he met Tom and he thought he was the best thing since world peace. 

Tom was twenty-four (or sixty-one, depending on who was counting) when he met Harry and he thought he was the most annoying thing on Earth, or any other planet for that matter.


End file.
